ANIMAL lovers have clashed with a Glasgow shop owner after he revealed plans to slaughter pigs he is rearing on city wasteground for their meat.

Reuben Chesters, who runs ethical food store Locavore, sparked controversy when he revealed plans to kill tthe popular porkers and sell their meat.

The animals have become local celebrities after appearing on a piece of overgrown land between Glasgow’s Victoria Infirmary and Queen’s Park Bowling Club.

Pram-pushing parents, joggers and cyclists have now become attached to the eight month old Gloucester Old Spots, who share their pen with a pair of pygmy goats.

Some have mounted an online campaign to save the pigs from their fate.

But Reuben is determined to make Queen’s pork from the Queen’s Park pigs, bringing home the bacon to his shop in the city’s Strathbungo - and encourage them to think about where their Saturday morning sausages come from.

The 28 year old said: “We’ve always sold meat in the shop and often people didn’t know or care where it came from.

“There are thousands of pigs slaughtered all across Scotland every day that have never seen daylight, are fed a soya bean mix which causes deforestation - just to make cheap sausages in supermarkets.

“People aren’t giving those big companies a hard time. It’s absolutely fine that they give us a hard time and I just hope it helps people think about it.”

Locals aim to preserve pigs

Protesters have flooded the shop’s social media pages with their snouts out of joint.

Louise Simpson, on Locavore’s Facebook, said: “At a local level, there are various ways to teach others and it surely doesn’t have to involve the demise animals who have become socialised with humans.”

Fellow protester David Scott added: “We do not need to eat meat. Killing two extra pigs will have zero impact on the behaviour of multiples or suppliers. Killing for profit is killing for profit. Remember only a few hundred years ago the most ethical in society were those who fed their slaves well.”

But mother Laura Kneale, visiting the pigs with her baby daughter, said: “My main concern is for the animal’s welfare, and if I knew an animal was treated fairly then I’d be less uncomfortable eating it. What they’re doing has been really important - it has brought up issues of animal welfare.”

Reuben in his ethical food shop

Reuben said: “Angry old ladies in the park have come over and shouted at me and the volunteers. One gave us a real barrage of abuse the other day saying we were monsters and unethical, an absolute disgrace.

“People see them as pets but we’re hoping what we’re doing helps the penny drop a bit. People ask what the pigs’ names are, but we don’t have names because we don’t want to get too attahched to them. The plan is for people to eat them and we’re trying to show the best possible way to produce meat and then try to highlight the bad end of that.”

The swine are almost out of time, with Reuben planning to take his two little pigs to a Lanarkshire abattoir, where they’ll be “stunned, hung upside down and drained of blood through the throat.”

He said: “I hope to walk in there with them and see the whole process, and film it if I’m allowed to. We’ve reared them in the most ethical way possible.

“The idea was to get the pigs in and make it clear to folk that they’re for food, that they’ll be fed waste from our shop, have lots of space and attention and fertilise the ground.

“People have come to see them and talked and thought about what we’re doing, as opposed to the usual case for pig production which a shed on a site similar to the one we have with hundreds of pigs in it.

“But I think some people would sometimes rather not see the best and not hear about the worst.”